The comments section of many a movie blog can be a sordid place, where hateful readers linger with nary a positive thing to say. Writers do what they can to avoid the comments, for to peer into that section beneath a post is to stare into the mouth of madness, and to wade into the conversation and attempt discourse with a commenter can be an exercise in insanity.
Oh, and as it turns out, studios may be hiring trolls to post bogus positive comments beneath stories pertaining to their upcoming movies.
MovieMavericks.com recently figured out that the strangely positive posts beneath their story on the Mirror Mirror trailer came from the same IP address. In addition, the same comments (from the same four users) could be found beneath Mirror Mirror posts on HitFix, ScreenRant, The Playlist, and more. Notice how “Charlie” misspells director Tarsem Singh’s name (“Tareem”) in all of the posts underneath all of the stories on which he comments … or, better yet, cuts and pastes.
So the questions, as mentioned by MovieMavericks, circle around who’s responsible. Is it Relativity Media trying to drum up support for their own film on movie message boards? Are the personal assistants of actors Julia Roberts, Armie Hammer or Lily Collins tasked with hitting movie sites to post positive comments about the trailer, whether they believe in them or not? And here’s a better question: does it matter? Comments sections are open to anybody, and if a studio wants to go through the effort of creating a fake name to post a positive comment that they hope influences a reader, is it any worse that “blurbing” favorable critics on movie posters, newspaper advertisements, or TV commercials? Are you guys more willing to see something like Mirror Mirror because a comment under a story said it’s going to be the best movie ever?
